The Doujinshi Code

You might recall that last year at Sakuracon, Gabriel was hauled by guile into the sensual world of Yaoi. We were not aware that Yaoi was but one deity in a greater pantheon of erotic gods, each with radically different domains. Looking back on two-thousand and six, it will forever be known as the year we broke The DouJinshi Code.

It sort of started as a joke, but as he began to come back with more and more material - like a toothless prospector emerging from a mineshaft - it was clear that this had become a kind of fixation. Doujinshi are fan works that can draw on multiple shows or books simultaneously, delivering in some cases a fanservice of the most blatant sort. For Brenna, for Brenna, now, I secured several Harry Potter products which (and I am being generous) do not adhere to canon. Although, the Lucius/Snape pairing appears to take place during their time at school, so for all I know that one might be legitimate.

Or - should I say - legintimate.

This was not, as last year was, a time for social extravaganzas. Tiny, utterly dependent organisms remained at home, and so upon the close the of the Dealer Room we took our leave of that strange dimension and resumed an ordinary existence. They moved the convention this year from a place far south of me to a place ten minutes away, and previously I either stayed in the hotel steeped in the odd context or at the very least had a long drive in the dark to reassert my own identity. With such a sliver of time between this reality and the one where Xianghua from Soul Calibur is buying a mocha, the effect does quite give one the bends.

Fred was back this year, and since they did not schedule us a panel together (as had been done in days of yore) we simply walked into his panel at an agreed upon time, and he left our panel after it had gone on for a while. We’ve gotten on famously ever since I figured out that he legitimately detests himself and is not hoisting some kind of glamour.

His booth faced away from us throughout the convention, and we could not see it, but we could perceive from where we were sitting that space itself had begun to warp in his direction - his line whipping out from it like a tentacle, hungry for matter. I saw a booth stocked with oriental weapons first shudder and then fly apart, sai and other turtle armaments sailing naked toward the throng. I saw a young girl dressed as some kind of magical princess lose her grip on a gashopon machine, soaring backward into what was now a boiling fuligin maw. Her staff - a common dowel, in a former life - slipped into that evil place and was gone.